


Moving Down

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Gen, in-universe, not exactly canon compliant, roommate fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four points of view on Billy and Tommy's new apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving Down

Amanda doesn’t know who these two jokers are; the word on the fourth floor is that they’re twins, but one has hair bleached to a point where it should be falling out. He talks at a million miles a minute and jumps up and down the stairs and whines that ‘Billy’ isn’t going fast enough. He wears clothes that look like they’re about to fall apart and smiles at her like she might be stupid enough to be interested.

The other one looks like a dark haired ball of anxiety. First off, as he’s carrying boxes up the stairs he never stops fidgeting. Amanda has a good eye for people, that’s why she reads tarot (she knows it’ll take off any day now and she’ll be able to move out of this dump) and he looks like he has an old soul. His clothes are about four or five sizes too big for him, and she’s pretty sure he came in at one point wearing a cape.

She doesn’t know who they are and she doesn’t care, but they look like they’re first time out of mommy and daddy’s care and she wonders how long it’ll be before they get mugged, stabbed, or shot.

There’s a burst of something and a shout, and then, “Tommy why would you _ever_ , oh my _God_ you got it in the vents this place is going to smell like banana pudding for weeks my bubbe will _murder_ me!” followed by laughter.

Amanda almost wants to point out that banana pudding will be French perfume compared to whatever the place must have smelled like before, considering the people who lived there, but she doesn’t bother. She only gets her broom and bangs it against the roof in hopes they’ll shut up.

~~~~

Teddy knows that he’s going to have an issue, even though he promised on the phone that he wouldn’t, the second that he steps inside the foyer of the building.

Foyer is being polite; it’s more like the hole where the foyer might have been, at one point, had this building actually ever had a foyer, had this building actually been used by people who had some kind of respectable occupation.

The foyer is a blackened space; there’s graffiti and centuries old dirt caking the walls, and a vague splash of something dark and reddish, and Teddy wants, wishes, bites his tongue against saying anything. Billy just looks so _pleased_.

Well, pleased is an exaggeration, Teddy thinks. What Billy really looks is a mix of proud, anxious, and potentially a little scared; but since anxious and scared is pretty much par for the course, Teddy settles with proud. And why shouldn’t he be, a deep and dark and vaguely traitorous side of Teddy’s brain argues. It’s his first apartment away from home, as a student, with only the barest parental assistance. It’s not supposed to be grand or amazing; it’s supposed to be a cockroach infested pit.

Besides, as Billy pointed out when he first brought it up, it’s got an amazing view of a back alley behind an Indian restaurant. 

“Welcome to Chateu d’Billy et Tommy,” Billy announces after he unlocks the door into the tiny gray room. Tommy is on the couch, lounging in a pair of extremely baggy jeans and a shirt that looks really familiar. 

“Yo.” Tommy produces, looking up from the TV for the barest second. Billy and Tommy decided that they should practice some family living; also Eli feels it promotes social behavior from the most delinquent member of the Young Avengers. Teddy isn’t so sure about that. The room is still in degrees of unpackedness, considering they’ve only been there for a few days. 

Billy indicates around the room. “Tommy’s room, I got the actual bedroom since you know, I figured you might want to stay over at some point.” The thought is generous, but Teddy is still trying to place Tommy’s shirt and he doesn’t have the heart anyway to point out to Billy that _his_ apartment comes with a television he doesn’t have to hit to work, air conditioning _and_ heating, and the luxury of a window lock that actually locks the window.

Finally he manages to figure out why the shirt looks so familiar. “You know that shirt is _mine_ , right?” he says, and Tommy looks over at Billy, who looks at Tommy.

“Found it in the dresser. We only have one.” 

~~~~~

Kate considers not visiting. She considers begging off with illness or potential fear of some kind of allergy: allergy to dust, to deep forgotten sidestreets, to bridge and tunnel people. However, all of those would be lies, and Kate prides herself on a degree of honesty, so she makes her way to Queens with a great deal of trepidation and armed with enough Febreze to detoxify even Tommy’s ripest socks.

She knows from Teddy’s reports that there’s no doorman, no buzzer, no security system. That’s not so much a worry with Tommy ‘if I can’t blow it up no one can’ Shepherd and Billy ‘bluelightningbluelightning’ Kaplan, but she’s cautious all the same. She wishes her bow would fit alongside all the Febreze, detergent and soap she’s bringing along as a housewarming gift, but it’s conspicuous and she’s had enough of bow-theft to last her a lifetime, thank you Clint.

As she heads up, she hears someone mutter something about the crazy twins upstairs and it only makes her hurry faster. 

Once she gets up to their actual abode, she doesn’t think that her housewarming gifts will be enough.

First off, the couch looks like it had been blown up, burned, electrocuted, dumped in toxic waste and then salvaged from a dump. A sick shade of neon green with bizarre red and black splotches of color, lumpy and scorched on one side and covered in a bright orange blanket, it could only belong to one person; the one person currently sleeping on it in a lump of bones, oversized clothing and white hair.

Billy is in the kitchenette: a fancy name for a pair of burners and a coffeemaker, and his hair is poking up in about six different directions. He looks at Kate in a bleary-eyed way and raises his hand to wave. “You’re early.”

“It’s one in the afternoon,” she points out dryly. Boys.

“You’re early,” Billy repeats, and Kate blesses the fact that he’s dressed, if that’s the case. 

Kate sets down her bag of gifts. “I thought I’d come and see Casa de Billy y Tommy myself.”

Billy scoffs. “Man, I told Tommy with was _Chateu d’Billy et Tommy_ , Spanish is so overdone.” He ambles over and goes through the bag. “I see you decided on the toxic dump theory of what living with Tommy is like,” he says as he lifts bottles of Febreze out of the bag. 

Kate shrugs a little, but she’s secretly a little worried. Billy is actually not a messy guy; his comics are ordered more precisely than any store’s collection, and he puts his clothes away. Tommy is like a hurricane walking; Kate knows that even without anyone telling her; that and the state of the front room says it all. “Are you sure you don’t want to live with Teddy?” she asks, moving a stool over and checking it for insect life before she sits down.

Billy looks a little surprised at the suggestion. “No way,” he says, and quickly amends the words. “I mean, yeah, eventually but you know, it was my idea to move in with Tommy.” Kate looks at him with her eyebrows in her hairline, and Billy insists, “No, seriously! I figured, I mean,” he pauses, and scratches the back of his head a little sheepishly. “He’s not so bad, you know?”

Kate is about to comment but takes a moment to reach for the coffee maker and goes to pour herself a cup when Billy stops her. “Uh, you really shouldn’t.”

“Why? Isn’t it fresh? I can make a new pot,” she says, and opens the top to change the filter. She reaches to get the old one and stops just in time and closes the top. “Billy,” she says, and Billy is suddenly very interested in the goings on of the floor, “is the filter a pair of Tommy’s underwear?”

“In my defense,” Billy says with a wide eyed expression on his face, “I don’t drink the coffee.” 

~~~~

College life is way better than high school – not that Tommy would actually know based on classes or anything, because he’s not in college, but Billy generally doesn’t looks as miserable anymore. He even smiles more.

It’s late when Billy trundles in, though, and Tommy’s perched on his favorite place in the new apartment; Billy finds him right away, and after a second they’re sitting next to each other on the rickety old fire escape. The smells of burnt samosas and curry waft up from the restaurant next door; the sounds of the owners fighting in Tamil drift in and out. It doesn’t matter, because Billy isn’t paying attention and so Tommy doesn’t, either. Instead Billy presses his head against the cold bars of the fire escape and is quiet for a long minute.

Tommy likes the silence. He doesn’t, usually; silence reminds him of juvie, reminds him of the cold tiny room he was put in, but when Billy’s around the silence is nice in a way he can’t describe. He doesn’t look over at his twin; just extends his legs out so that they dangle between the bars of the fire escape. Normally the bars would be too narrow for this, but the building is old and in a few places they’ve been long pulled off.

“I shouldn’t have taken intro to psychology,” Billy finally says, breaking the silence. His head stays where it is. “I should have known all I would see is my mom blabbering at me about studies and _tests_ and that I would go crazy by the end of week one.” 

Tommy snorts. “I _told_ you, little bro.”

Billy nods miserably, but turns his head a bit. “Is all I get an _I told you so?_ ”

“What do you want, me to write it on the Statue of Liberty?” Tommy pauses for a second and calculates in his head the speed he’d need to accomplish this. “Because I totally could.”

Billy snorts. “Just what I need. A criminal act as a testament to my inability to cope with Sigmund Freud. That’s just a case study waiting to happen.”

Tommy shrugs. “Teddy off making you move yet?”

There’s a pause and Billy hits his head against the bars hard enough that he mutters a low ow, and rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. “No,” he says, and Tommy isn’t surprised. “He doesn’t say anything but I can tell.” Tommy thinks only a blind idiot wouldn’t be able to; under the dictionary _subtle_ doesn’t correspond with Teddy. Tommy wonders if the squishy alien is jealous or something, but deep down he doesn’t care. He only cares because if Billy caves, he’ll move, and then Tommy won’t have this anymore.

He doesn’t know what _this_ is, exactly. He’s not exactly an expert on the family junk, considering his own family blew. Current company excluded. Tommy shrugs some, as if it’s no big deal, except that it really really is. “Well, whatever man, up to you,” he says.

Billy looks at him with a face he sees in the mirror, but with an expression he’s never seen on himself before he finally speaks. “You want a coke?” Billy says, but he’s not moving. 

Tommy shakes his head and swings his legs. “Nah,” he says, and the metal of the ancient fire escape creaks under him like a sigh. “I’m cool.”

Billy smiles a bit, “Yeah? Me too.” 

They sit there for a long time.


End file.
